Say, You own a house and you have a mortgage. You always make your payment on time and then one month you receive a notice that you are behind.
How can this happen?
Possibly, your payment was misapplied. This happens for a number of reasons -- an early payment, a few pennies too much, your loan was transferred, and so on.
Any of those can mess with the automatic payment system. Mortgage companies often handle billions of dollars in loans and if your payment is the correct amount and on time, no human person ever touches your check -- or even sees your check. It is all handled automatically.
If there is something a little bit |
wrong, the automatic system may not know what to do with your payment, so it gets rejected. That way, a genuine person can decide what to do and sometimes that individual may misapply your payment in a variety of ways.
People are only human.
Later, you receive a notice that you your missed your payment. Of course, you know you didn't miss a payment so you call up the loan service department and tell them so.
The entry-level clerk you speak to is staring at a computer screen with a history of your loan payments on it -- a very confusing screen, with numerical codes for each transaction - and there are LOTS of transactions, all in chronological order..
Your payment arrives each month, and there is one code for that. Then, (continued, page 2) |
Is this a bad time of year to put a house on the market?
